World Water Day 2012: Shocking Ways You Waste Water Every Day

Thursday is World Water Day, a global event established by the United Nations in 1992 to promote international water awareness. Since then, the movement has taken off, with many people working to conserve water by making small changes to their lives on a daily basis: they use refillable water bottles, turn off the tap when they aren't using it, and take showers instead of baths.

These efforts are certainly noble, but what about how we accidentally contribute to water waste? Here are a few shocking ways you might be overusing water without even realizing it.

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Comments

[CASnyder]

04:40 PM on 05/01/2012

Not everyone wastes water in the ways they cited, none of them were things that I do. Not that I can't waste water on occasion, but I'm usually aware when I do, & cut it short. There are alternatives to letting your "yellow mellow" as they put it. The plumbing code allows for greywater (wash water) to be reused for toilet flushing and for irrigating non-edible plants. We have opted to go with a composting toilet for our new home, which won't smell, unlike their proposed solution. Then there is softening your water, fracking for natural gas, most manufacturing operations, etc.

[jenniferkizzy]

03:23 AM on 03/23/2012

we human's waste so much water is it any wonder were not all dying of thirst bye

[jenniferkizzy]

03:21 AM on 03/23/2012

oh and sending water down a drilled hole in the ground too send natural gas up yeah that's big waster of water

[jenniferkizzy]

03:19 AM on 03/23/2012

pig waste run off coal waste run off nuclear power plant run off run off from washing your car or watering your side walk or grass run off from various chemical plant's i could go on beauty salon's pool's hot tub's shower's bath tub's and washing machines dish washing machine's ice maker's latte machines and even the occasional soda dispensing machine at the mall all consist and are derived from the usage of water so all in all human's waste an approximate amount of one billion gallon's of water a day

[jenniferkizzy]

03:16 AM on 03/23/2012

1 washing clothes brushing your teeth washing your hair and or body washing your car 2watering your yard side walk and or plant's number three giving your pet's water and number four making tea or other water related beverages bye

[thetruthhurts2010]

10:35 PM on 03/22/2012

I'm wasting about 75 gallons of whirlpool tub water right now. And all the electricity used to heat the water and run the jets. Life is good.

[joncavanaugh]

05:02 PM on 03/24/2012

Gosh, aren't you a funny guy.

[vetxcl]

08:52 PM on 03/22/2012

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_energy/ew3/ew3-freshwater-use-by-us-power-plants.pdf

[Radiation Is Invisible]

02:56 PM on 03/22/2012

Talk about wasting water!

Nuclear power plants use one million gallons of water a minute! Yes, a minute.

And there are over 400 nuclear power plants in the world.

Multiply one million gallons of water a minute times 400 plus nuclear power plants!

Now that's huge usage of water!

[pixiepotpie]

04:44 PM on 03/22/2012

and a incredibly dangerous one at that.

[vetxcl]

08:43 PM on 03/22/2012

Faved for insight. It's another cause of global warming. See also; water evaporators.

[zumajim]

02:37 PM on 03/22/2012

As to number six, I wish stand-up urinals were commonplace in family homes. They're so much more efficient. (Sorry ladies, they may not be suitable for you, but in my household you're outnumbered three to one.) We guys don't mind not flushing a pee, but my wife freaks out about it, so much so that me and the boys are restricted to one bathroom in our 2-bath house!

[CASnyder]

04:45 PM on 05/01/2012

There are waterless urinals that don't need water to let the urine go down without stinky sewer gasses coming up, and they pass the plumbing code and are easy to retrofit into a building. And considering it spares the women the horror of sitting down where there is no seat or a wet seat in the dark, I think it might make for a lot of happy homes.

[TankGirlz]

02:20 PM on 03/22/2012

I think things like this do more harm than good. While I believe awareness is a powerful tool to help people make everyday decisions, telling people your jeans, your food etc is killing the planet only makes them balk. Instead, focus on small things that can have a huge impact like reducing lawn watering, don't let water run endlessly while you clean the kitchen or brush your teeth. Better yet, show just how important water is to EVERY aspect of simply living. And by polluting/wasting it you are in real terms killing yourselves, your children and so on.

[TankGirlz]

04:25 PM on 03/22/2012

http://www.wateruseitwisely.com/100-ways-to-conserve/index.php

[vetxcl]

08:42 PM on 03/22/2012

It also causes them to look for alternatives that are available and to utilize the suggestions mentioned by the slideshow.

[Ted229]

12:51 PM on 03/22/2012

Is water really wasted?

[CASnyder]

04:57 PM on 05/01/2012

Theoretically all water can be purified and recycled, but the problem is we are mining our potable water from the ground faster than it can be replenished by the evapotranspiration cycle. Water evaporating from the oceans is relatively pure, and gets carried inland to fall as rain, picking up pollution from the air (acid rain). Much of this pollution can be filtered out by the soils and help replenish the ground water if the water gets a chance to soak in, but our cities are mostly designed to view rain as a nuisance that must be channeled away to the sea as soon as possible via hard surfaces. So even areas like Florida that have 2-3 times the rain they need to meet the state's needs for potable water each year are draining their ground water dry and have a potable water shortage. Dumb, hunh? And that's not even touching on the nasty chemicals deliberately pumped into the ground to frack & release natural gas for us to waste in leaky buildings, which sometimes end up in drinking water.

[failuremagazine]

12:43 PM on 03/22/2012

I know we waste a lot by buying bottled water:
http://failuremag.com/index.php/feature/article/bottled_and_sold/

[TankGirlz]

02:22 PM on 03/22/2012

Not to mention the billions and billions of empty plastic bottles. Not to mention the cost (higher than a gallon of gas) for what amounts to filtered tap water...

[vetxcl]

08:25 PM on 03/22/2012

Easier and healthier to filter it at home, until such time that the EPA can have some noticeable effect.

[Monique DiCarlo]

12:33 PM on 03/22/2012

"Meat production is a controversial industry," this pertains to the feeding lots (massive) meat industry, not pastured animals I assume. Growing soy is done in a very unsustainable way as well, besides this soy is pretty toxic! http://www.westonaprice.org/soy-alert Most importantly, it shortens your telomeres!

[vetxcl]

08:21 PM on 03/22/2012

Thanks for the link.

[vetxcl]

08:24 PM on 03/22/2012

Indeed. This alone , among the ten problems mentioned is reason enough for me to avoid it:
"Soy phytoestrogens are potent antithyroid agents that cause hypothyroidism and may cause thyroid cancer. In infants, consumption of soy formula has been linked to autoimmune thyroid disease." - from link you provide.

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